Make sure to read today’s Los Angeles magazine post – about American Sniper’s L.A. filming locations. My articles typically get published in the late morning/early afternoon hours.
The Quality Café
While stalking in Downtown Los Angeles a couple of weekends ago, the Grim Cheaper and I found ourselves hungry so I suggested grabbing some lunch at the Quality Café on West 7th Street – a diner that has appeared in countless productions over the years. When we showed up to stalk the place, though, we were shocked to discover that it was completely boarded up. I was even further shocked to discover, once I returned home, that, aside from some brief blurbs about its filming history, I could not seem to find any information about the place online. I was extremely curious if the cafe had ever been an actual working restaurant or if it had only ever existed as a film set. So I contacted fellow stalker Harry Medved, author of one of my very favorite stalking tomes – Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide to Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors – who was nice enough to give me the scoop on the former greasy spoon. As it turns out, the Quality Café was indeed a real life restaurant at one point time. It closed its doors a few years back and is now used solely for filming, although word on the street is that the place might re-open as an eatery once again in the near future.
[ad]
Being that it is completely boarded up and there is not a whole lot to see while there, the Quality Café does not make for a great stalking venue, but because it has such an incredibly vast filming history, I figured it was worthy of a blog post.
In Catch Me If You Can, it is while dining at the Quality Café that a waiter clues Carl Hanratty (aka Tom Hanks) into the fact that Barry Allen, the alias Frank Abagnale Jr. (aka Leonardo DiCaprio) has been using, is the actual name of the comic book character “The Flash”.
In 1995’s Se7en, Tracy Mills (aka Gwyneth Paltrow) confesses to Detective Lt. William Somerset (aka Morgan Freeman) that she is pregnant with Detective David Mills’ (aka Brad Pitt’s) baby over a cup of coffee at the Quality Café.
Morgan Freeman returned to the Quality Café in 2004 to film the scene from Million Dollar Baby in which his character, Eddie Scrap-Iron Dupris, takes Maggie Fitzgerald (aka Hilary Swank) out to celebrate her birthday.
In Gone in Sixty Seconds, the Quality Café is the diner where Helen Raines (aka Grace Zabriskie), the mother of Memphis (aka Nicolas Cage) and Kip Raines (aka Giovanni Ribisi), works.
In Training Day, Detective Alonzo Harris (aka Denzel Washington) and Jake Hoyt (aka Ethan Hawke) meet up at the café on their first day of working together.
In Old School, Mitch Martin (aka Luke Wilson) takes Nicole (aka Ellen Pompeo) to the Quality Café and tries to convince her that he is actually a nice guy.
In Mr. and Mrs. Smith, John Smith (aka Brad Pitt) and Eddie (aka Vince Vaughn) meet up at the Quality Café to discuss the failed assassination attempt of Benjamin Danz (aka Adam Brody).
In 2001’s Ghost World, Enid (aka Thora Birch) and Rebecca (aka a very young Scarlett Johansson) spy on some supposed Satanists while dining at the Quality Café.
In 2009’s The Stepfather, the Quality Café is where David Harris (aka Dylan Walsh) asks Michael Harding (aka Penn Badgley) to be his best man.
In Sex and Death 101, the Quality Café is where Death Nell (aka Winona Ryder) tells Roderick Blank (aka Simon Baker) her life story.
In 2008’s The Midnight Meat Train, the Quality Café is where Leon’s (aka Bradley Cooper’s) wife, Maya (aka Leslie Bibb), works.
In 1993’s What’s Love Got To Do With It, the Quality Café is where Ike Turner (aka Laurence Fishburne) takes Anna Mae Bullock (aka Angela Bassett) out to dinner for the first time.
The Quality Café was the site of a triple murder in the Season One episode of CSI: New York titled “Outside Man”.
In the Season One episode of Mad Men titled “5G”, the Quality Café stood in for the Delight Café where Don Draper (aka Jon Hamm) met up with his half-brother, Adam Whitman (aka Jay Paulson), whom he had been estranged from for years.
Harry Medved also let me know that, according to Marty Cummins, the key assistant location manager for 500 Days of Summer, the Quality Café is where Summer (aka Zooey Deschanel) broke up with Tom (aka Joseph Gordon-Levitt) at the beginning of the flick.
And while the exterior of the restaurant appeared as a local hangout in 2004’s You Got Served . . .
. . . as you can see in the above screen captures, a different restaurant was used for the interior filming.
EMBED-The Quality Cafe in Movies Mash-Up – Watch more free videos
You can watch a fabulous compilation from the Screen Junkies website of several different movies that have been filmed at the café by clicking above.
Big THANK YOU to Harry Medved for filling me in on the restaurant’s history.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: The Quality Café is located at 1238 West 7th Street in Downtown Los Angeles. The restaurant is currently closed to the public and is only available for film shoots, so I can’t say that I’d really recommend stalking it as there is just not a whole lot to see.
Stu’s House from “The Hangover”
One location that I have been on the lookout for for over a year now is the adorable bungalow where Stu Price (aka Ed Helms) and his girlfriend Melissa (aka Rachael Harris) lived in fave movie The Hangover. I absolutely fell in love with Stu’s home the moment I saw it in the flick and, thanks to its Craftsman-style architecture, became convinced that it was most likely located in the Pasadena area. Thankfully, I had spotted an address number of 1325 on the front of the house while watching the movie, so as soon as I got home from the theatre I immediately began searching all of the 1300 blocks in Pasadena for the property. When that failed, I moved my hunt first to South Pasadena and then to Altadena, but came up completely empty-handed on both ends. I was still absolutely convinced, though, that the property had to somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley. And oh, how wrong I was! Enter Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who decided to help me in my Hangover quest by searching for the home outside of the Pasadena city limits. And sure enough, it wasn’t long before he found it, in a place I never would have even thought to look – West Hollywood. So, a couple of weeks ago, after our tour of Paramount Studios, I took fellow stalkers Lavonna, Beth, Debbie, and Connie, who were all in town visiting from Ohio, right on over to WeHo to do some Hangover stalking.
The house was used in the very brief, but extremely funny scene in which Phil Wenneck (aka Bradley Cooper), Alan Garner (aka Zach Galifianakis), and Doug Billings (aka Justin Bartha) pick up Stu before heading to Las Vegas, where Doug’s bachelor party is being held. And I am very happy to report that the incredibly picturesque home looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.
As you can see in the above screen captures and interior images of the property (which I snagged off of a real estate listing that I found online yesterday), the actual interior of the home was also used in the filming of The Hangover. The areas used include the kitchen;
one of the bathrooms;
the dining room;
and the living room – the fireplace of which you can just barely see in the above screen capture.
The window where Stu and Melissa sat in the scene is located just to the left of the abode’s front door. Unfortunately, though, the real estate website did not include an interior photograph of that exact spot. Nor did the listing make any reference to the home’s cinematic history, which is a total abomination in my eyes! I mean, come on, did the real estate agent honestly not realize that mentioning the property’s appearance in one of the biggest movies of 2009 would add value to the home? Sigh! Why do I have to think of everything? 😉
The 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 1,746-square foot dwelling, which was originally built in 1919, was sold this past August for a cool $1.2 million. Interestingly enough, while searching property records for the house yesterday, I came across information that former Beverly Hills, 90210-actress Lindsay Price and her then-husband, producer Shawn Pillar, owned the home from October 2003 through March 2006. So incredibly cool!
[ad]
On a Hangover side note – Before meeting up with me a couple of weeks ago, fellow stalkers Lavonna, Debbie, Connie, and Beth went on a tour of Warner Brothers Studios, where The Hangover 2 is currently being filmed, and while there they spotted both Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis. The actors were being shuttled around on a golf cart at the time and while Zach tried to shield his face from view, Bradley Cooper was nice enough to turn around and wave to the girls. So cute! 🙂
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location and to fellow stalkers Lavonna and Beth for loaning me the above photographs of Zach and Bradley to publish in this post! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Stu Price’s house from The Hangover is located at 1325 North Ogden Drive in Hollywood. You can check out the home’s real estate listing here.
The “Hangover” House
A few weeks ago, Mike, from MovieShotsLA, called me up to let me know that he was on the hunt for the main house used in fave movie The Hangover. The two of us both had a pretty good inkling that the residence was located somewhere in the Pasadena area, we just weren’t sure exactly where. Randomly enough during that same conversation, I happened to mention that I had just read on OnLocationVacations – my go-to-stalking guide 🙂 – that 90210 had been filming all week at a large gated home located at 465 South Grand Avenue in Pasadena. Well, it wasn’t five minutes after we ended our call that Mike phoned me up a second time, extremely excited, and said “I found The Hangover house and you’ll NEVER guess where it is!” As it turns out, the house was located just two doors down from the residence where 90210 had been filming! Apparently, while looking at aerial images of the 90210 location, Mike noticed a neighboring property that bore a striking resemblance to the Hangover house. Turns out, it was the Hangover house! 🙂 So, I guess it’s true what Walt Disney once said . . . It really is a small world, after all! Well, when it comes to filming locations, at least. 🙂 So, that same weekend, Mike drove out to meet me in Pasadena so the two of us could do a little Hangover stalking.
In The Hangover, the house pictured above belongs to the parents of Doug’s (aka Justin Bartha’s) fiancé, Tracy (aka Sasha Barrese). The residence is featured several times throughout the film. It first shows up at the very beginning of the movie as the spot from which Doug and his soon to be brother-in-law Alan (aka Zach Galifianakis) leave for the infamous Vegas bachelor party.
And, as you can see in the above screen capture and aerial image, the real life backyard, which is absolutely HUGE, was used in several scenes as well, including the scene in which Phil (aka Bradley Cooper) calls Tracy, while she is sunning herself by the pool, to let her know that the guys have been unavoidably detained in Vegas an extra day.
The movie’s final wedding scene also took place in the home’s real life backyard.
As you can see in the above aerial image, the house has a fairly large covered back porch area. That porch is where Stu (aka Ed Helms) finally breaks up with his belligerent girlfriend Melissa (aka Rachel Harris) while Alan and the rest of the wedding party look on. I am also fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was used in the filming of several scenes, as well.
The Hangover house is absolutely beautiful in person. Although, thanks to its size, calling it a “house” is actually a bit of a misnomer. The place is really more of a mansion. It is absolutely HUGE in person, much bigger than I expected it to be. Even though it did appear quite large in The Hangover, trust me when I say that in real life it is far, far larger – gargantuan actually! I can’t even imagine living there. The 7 bedroom, 7 bathroom house, which was built in 1930, measures a whopping 7,892 square feet. And while the property is gated, I am happy to report that quite a bit of it can be seen from the street. 🙂
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!
[ad]
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: The house from The Hangover is located at 415 South Grand Avenue in Pasadena.
I Am Just So That Into It!
On Friday night, literally the second my boyfriend got off work, I dragged him right out to see new movie He’s Just Not That Into You. He said afterwards that if he had known it was a two-hour-and-nine-minute-long-movie, he never would have agreed to see it. LOL Needless to say, he just wasn’t that into the movie. But I, on the other hand, was! I ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT! LOVE LOVE LOVED IT! I was practically skipping out of the theatre afterwards, with a huge grin on my face, thinking to myself that movies like HJNTIY are the reason I moved to Hollywood. Movies like that make me want to act. 🙂 I’m not aiming to be the next Meryl Streep and I have no desire to be the darling of the independent film circuit – I just want to make people laugh and walk out of that movie theatre with a big ol’ smile on their face. 🙂 That’s the kind of acting I want to do – and HJNTIY is EXACTLY the kind of movie I hope to someday be a part of. So, in case you didn’t get it the first few times – I LOVED THIS MOVIE! 🙂
So, yesterday, after I found one of the movie’s filming locations, I, of course, ran right out to stalk it. 🙂 Although the movie is set in the East Coast city of Baltimore, most of the filming took place – of course – in Los Angeles. Only two weeks of filming actually occured in Baltimore and only four of the HJNTIY actors (Bradley Cooper, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly, and Kevin Connolly) made the trip out to the East Coast. The film’s writers, Marc Silverstein and Abby Kohn, decided to set their story in Baltimore because they had never seen it done before. Most romantic comedies are set in either New York or Los Angeles and Marc and Abby were hoping to shake things up a bit. Since Marc had lived in Baltimore for ten years before moving to L.A. to pursue a screenwriting career, he knew the coastal city well and thought it was the perfect choice to set their story.
But since I couldn’t very well run right out to Baltimore to stalk HJNTIY, I decided to try to find some of the movie’s West Coast locations. I really wanted to stalk the coffee shop where Drew Barrymore met Kevin Connolly towards the end of the movie, but I struck out on that one. Instead, after a bit of Googling, I happened to find these paparazzi photos of Scarlett Johansson and Bradley Cooper filming a scene at a grocery store in Burbank. From there it was just a matter of finding the right grocery store. And sure enough, I did! 🙂
In real life the grocery store is called Handy Market and it is a very cute and very tiny little shop. According to one of the Handy Market checkers, back in October of 2007 the store was shut down for a full day and a half for the filming of the two short scenes that took place there. Scenes were filmed both inside the store – at the first check-out stand and in a few of the aisles – and outside on the market’s exterior West facing wall.
It’s not hard to see why producers chose to use Handy Market. According to this article about the filming of HJNTIY , director Ken Kwapis said “One of the things that I love about Baltimore is that the texture of the city can be summed-up in one word: brick. The brick textures of the interiors and the exteriors are, to me, so expressive, so distinctive. Being a resident of Baltimore, you may not realize it, but boy, it’s not easy to find a lot of brick in L.A.” LOL Handy’s all-brick exterior must have made it a shoe-in for being used in the movie.
So, for all of you out there who weren’t like me and didn’t catch HJNTIY on opening night, drop what you’re doing and go see it now! I guarantee you so will be that into it! 🙂
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂
Stalk It: Burbank’s Handy Market is located at 2514 W. Magnolia Boulevard in – you guessed it! – Burbank. The Home Depot store located at 16800 Roscoe Boulevard in Van Nuys was also used in He’s Just Not That Into You, although I most likely won’t stalk that location. 🙂 My boyfriend would probably be really excited if I did, though. LOL